The number of smart personal devices (SPDs) per person is continuously increasing, such as laptops, smart phones, tablets, devices supporting BLUETOOTH brand communications, and media devices including digital cameras. New devices are now entering the market from eyewear displays, cameras, smart watches, biometric devices, and more.
Many devices are inconsistent in capabilities, and virtually no common services are available to all devices. For example, some of these devices have no networking, some support BLUETOOTH brand communications and/or wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi), and some have full wide area network (WAN) cell phone stacks. Thus, some devices may talk to one of many networks, some devices provide only data (e.g., no voice, location, persistent storage, etc.), some devices cannot talk to any other devices (e.g., like many of today's cameras), etc.
Some of the existing systems, while insufficient, attempt to network SPDs. For example, some devices act as WAN hotspots to allow multiple SPDs to access connectivity to carrier WAN data networks using Wi-Fi to connect between SPDs and the hotspot. However, many of these systems are limited to data only. That is, no known systems provide any voice, location, authentication, or other expanded features. As another example, some devices support smart phone tethering to allow a smart phone to appear as a hotspot to other SPDs, again using Wi-Fi to connect devices. However, most tethering solutions are limited to simple data communications or interface through a specific application program.
In still another example, some devices support short-range wireless communication between electronic components, such as via BLUETOOTH brand communications which standardize physical and datalink layers and provide limited profiles. However, such BLUETOOTH brand personal area networks (PANs) are limited to SPDs with BLUETOOTH brand radio transceivers.